


The Night of the Full Moon

by Puniyo



Series: Concubine [5]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Pagan Rituals, Psychological Manipulation, Sexual Situations, Unresolved Sexual Tension, alternative universe, changes in POV, mention of violence and blood, relationship triangle, worship of sensuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:32:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puniyo/pseuds/Puniyo
Summary: ‘Yes, I will hunt for you tonight Yuzuru.’ He smiles while he places another kiss on the young man’s forehead. ‘I will hunt you and make you mine.'In the night of the Full Moon, Yuzuru has to decide where his loyalty lies - the Pagan East or the Star-Written Empire.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Dear all, it's time for major decisions in Concubine. This is probably one of the major installments in the series in terms of theme, so as usual, it is broken down into two chapters to preserve my sanity. Bear in mind that I'm no expert in pagan rituals and all of these come from my imagination.
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a work of FICTION! Fictional as in not real in case it wasn't clear.

It is the fourth time he sees that tree, the faint burgundy ring in the hollow trunk and rotting bark. The prints on the damp earth are of his horse, large but shallow on the mud and he chooses the left fork this time. The same infant owl is perched on the cypress, plucking the needles and scales on the twigs in a storm of leaves and the carcass of the new born fox is by the roots of the cedar, limp and abandoned on the shadows, the tail still bleeding and almost severed.

He follows the call of the wind, the playful laughter of children in the air pulling him to the shelter of the mushroom canopies, the gusts tackling his back, forward and forward, the road behind him closing in the darkness. It is the same tree, ring on its dissolving husk, but Javier notices a jade coin encrusted in it, a trail of red smearing the polished mark of the sun. He reaches for the belt in his hips instinctively, the pommel of his sword, the royal seal, one ring, two.

The last one is missing.

The shrilling cry of a woman echoes in the void of the tree and the emperor barely dodges the arrow that flies mere inches over his shoulder, the silver tip slashing through his tunic to his skin. It hits right at the center of the jade coin, shattering it to tiny pieces. The laughter of the children is loud again, joined by the hysteric yells of those that were human and those that were not.

It is the forest of the East. The forest of the hunters.

Javier pulls the reigns as tight as he can. The voices are behind, from below, the drums beat in an incoherent march, as his horse gallops through the maze of trees that has no solution. From the top, right next to him, he can hear the taunting of the blades, the eyes in the branches. The darkness of the night envelops him in its cloak of fear. The mocking wails, they are celebrating his head on their spears, the frenzied steps following him, his empire under their feet. His heart assaults his ribcage threatening to rip it apart as the panic of being hunted paralyzes his throat. He gasps for air but he is poisoned by the chants of death.

His own death.

_You will never be nothing, Javier._

His horse suddenly halts its unnerved stampede as a leopardess launches over its neck from the stealth curtains of the tree crowns, overthrowing the emperor to the ground. Her long fangs sink into the golden mane, into the muscles, gnawing and ripping apart a chunk of the pulsating tendon, of crimson soaked tissue, killing the horse instantly. All the cries suddenly stop, complete silence restored in the labyrinth of the forest when the large feline growls, the cadence of her raspy orders resonating in every single spirit awake. Javier’s whole body visibly trembles too at the arrival of that frequency, penetrating so deep into his flesh that he kneels in submission.

The leopardess jumps on him too, shoving his chest to the dust and clay, her claws pressing and digging on the ridges of his sternum with all her weight. Javier thinks it might break under her paws of queen, the iron cushions grinding his lungs to a gelatinous lump so he can choke and asphyxiate. She looms over his face, her muzzle and whiskers of silver grazing over his nose. He sees himself reflected in the crystal orbs of the leopardess, not Javier, the emperor, but Javier, the little boy. He is so small, just a star in her beastly gaze, a man of an empire that was not his to rule and a man of a consort that was not his to have.

A solitary tear falls from the corner of his eye as he mutters Yuzuru’s name. Javier flinches when the rough tongue sweeps across his cheek, afraid the leopardess will finally devour him, and yet, it is the caress of a mother and he the cub, lost but back to the safety of her bosom. He sits as she releases him and under the moonlight that radiates only on the majestic animal, Javier recognizes the pattern of one of her rosette spots.

A flower of the night.

 

 

‘Yuzuru is back!’

The children stop their clandestine games, amateur imitations of adults’ swordfights and battle formations, in the outskirts of the village and they run to every tent, the rampage of their high-pitched screeches soon morphing into an uproar of welcome.

‘Yuzuru? Impossible.’

‘It is really Yuzuru!’

‘Yuzuru has returned to us!’

‘Yuzuru!’

A little girl of grey braids like a turbulent river of ashes dashes to Yuzuru and hugs him by the hips just as he dismounts his horse. He almost falls back from the force of her impact but he lifts her up in the air and they twirl together, both their laughter so different in timbre and yet the same in happiness. The villagers try to grab her before the filthiness contaminates him but the young man doesn’t let go of her hand.

‘Yuzuru! You came back.’

‘I promised you, didn’t I?’ He crouches so they are both of the same height.

‘I have behaved well while you were away.’ She kisses his cheek, her tiny lips the warmest ones he had ever felt.

‘You’re a good girl, Mana.’

‘Why did you cut your hair, Yuzuru?’

He stands up, an imposter smile spreading to the corners of his mouth. He reaches for the shorter locks now, the breeze on the back of his neck reminding him of the swiftness of his own gesture of defiance and the sharpness of Javier’s blade. Patrick’s hand on his shoulder breaks the cage of the memory and he shudders when the general nudges closer and inhales the scent of his hair.

‘You have the longest tresses of the village now, Mana.’

‘But yours are more beautiful. I want to be like you, Yuzuru, one day. I want to be a huntress too.’

His fingers curl into fists and his nail dig into the palms, marking the different lines with petite crescents. He swallows slightly too hard, not saliva but air, the air of the lies lodged in his throat and the pressure jabs his eardrums.

_Be everything and nothing, my Yuzuru._

‘Won’t you give us a blessing Yuzuru?’

An elder man with hands of nettles and a large scar on his forehead, a tea leaf in the disguise of a sage one, bows to him with his hands crossed on his chest.

‘A blessing, Yuzuru.’

‘Please protect us, Yuzuru.’

‘It is the night of the Full Moon.’

The woman with copper nails and bronze stripped arms, the young boy swinging the wooden rapier with a bamboo pole even larger than his own height, the whole village bows to Yuzuru, the clamor of his arrival transmuted into the reverent silence. Only the fire of the pyre continues the succession of the chewing of the charcoal.

‘Bless us, oh Virgin Huntress of the East.’

Patrick guides Yuzuru, the younger man with his eyes closed, to the flames, to the light at the center of their village, directly under the silver roundness hung in the sky. He breathes of the seeds entrenched in the soil waiting to be born, of the aroma of the withering buds nipped by the beaks of the eagles of the valleys. He even breathes of the water deep below his feet, below all the pebbles and limestone, below the sand and the ocean.

‘Bless us, my Huntress.’

Patrick kisses him, the fever of his own lips with the purity in Yuzuru’s, a chaste contact broken as the young man’s open his eyes, the unfathomable divinity possessing his whole soul. Yuzuru spits to the fire and the blazes contort into ribbons of the same feathers on his back. They rise to the skies in a dance for him only. Their warmth spreads to all corners, all tents, flirting with the gale winds for an affair, clinging to winter as their lover.

Yuzuru too drinks of the heat and the glow that gathers in his hands but as he peers into the shadows of the trees in the forest in front of him, the embers burn his fingers and he hisses in pain. The mark on his collarbone too stings as the red and orange ribbons recede, each petal searing the flesh beneath, and he has never parted the veil of darkness so clearly as now.

_It is written in the stars._

The man with eyes that were their own fire, perpetually ablaze in time.

‘Javier.’

In the infinite hours of the night, Patrick’s arrow is precise in its aim, swiftly camouflaged in the reticence of the silence. The missile does not falter in its path towards the shadows, a nest of bats and a league of owls flying in the delirium of their disrupted intercourse.

‘What are you doing?’ The exasperation in Yuzuru’s voice floods his own words.

‘You saw him too, I know. Don’t lie to me.’ Patrick raises a second arrow, arming it on his bow, tip aligned with his finger. ‘If he is here, the whole army must be on their way.’

‘It’s the night of the Full Moon. You cannot kill tonight.’

‘Not if he offers himself to be my prey in my territory.’ He pulls the string back, not a single muscle trembling in its soaring tension. ‘I can Yuzuru, and I will.’

‘Please stop.’ The young man reaches for the bow but the target is set. ‘Please don’t do this.’ Yuzuru grabs the metallic shaft of the arrow, the silver tip piercing through the skin of his palm where it burned the most. The blood leaks down to his wrist and he stares at Patrick with the renewed paragon of the sacred in his eyes, glassy but not a drop shed. ‘I demand you in name of Nature to stop immediately.’

The bray of the horse echoed in the forest transpires of relief and Patrick drops his bow and arrow, gulping the soreness of his ire. He kneels to Yuzuru, asking for forgiveness, as his fingers scrape the soil of the damp land.

‘Why are you so willing to protect him?’

The young man extends his hands to the fire, the pearls of red raining in the flames. The blazing ribbons are once more in a masquerade with their summoner, even more protective and the wings larger, honoring their safeguarding promise. Yuzuru blows a tender breath to the pyre, a whisper of his unsung devotion.

The bonfire expires, the swirls of smoke ascending to the stars. Bones to ashes, flickers to mute pleas, Nature to a dark-haired boy.

_Everything and nothing._

The village claps for the fulfilled blessing.

 

 

‘It is written in the stars.’

I hate the stars. I hate them so much. You have always told me they would guide me back. But they never did. You never did. I hate the words you tell me. Your promises and your lies. Have you ever told me the truth? Have you? The stars and my name. My name and your name. Were those a lie too?

‘Do you hate me?’ I want to tell you that I do, but I don’t. I shake my head and I extend my hands. You can do anything you want. Everything like you like to tell me. Everything. ‘And nothing.’ And nothing. Everything and nothing. Am I not already? Am I not what you always wanted me to be? The shadow that walks with you and the air when you forget to breathe? ‘It is not for me.’ Then for whom?

‘Play me a song.’ I sit by the zither you gave me. The wood is dark like my hair and you say I’m beautiful. ‘You are beautiful.’ I don’t blush anymore, but you say I should. I pluck the first string and the sound is beautiful. I continue until they have all been touched in their descending scale. I don’t know any song but you say I can play anything. I experiment jumping on the sequence and I strum them. ‘Imagine touching yourself, my Yuzuru.’ The sound is gentler as I try again. Also quicker, and mine. Only mine. One of the strings snap and it cuts my finger.

‘You’re not touching yourself.’ You walk to me and you pull the broken string with such coercion that the zither almost falls from my lap. I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me. ‘It’s not for the pain.’ You tie the string around my neck and you’re pulling the knot tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe. ‘Play.’ My fingers are shivering, the silk carving into my neck. Please let me go. ‘Play.’ I brush the threads as the tears fall to my cheeks. My hand moves slowly, forward and backward. You pull tighter and I am starting to feel dizzy from the pain. ‘Play.’ I close my eyes and I let you dictate the rhythm. The sound is different and I am begging for air. I can feel each strum resonate inside of me. Please let me go. It is strong but gentle the sound it makes. The sounds I make. Don’t pull tighter please. I’m not playing the zither, I’m touching the strings like I touch myself. Please forgive me. The frail brush of the fingertip of a virgin and the hand that caresses like a whore. Please forgive me.

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ You finally release the knot on my neck and you hold me in your arms. I’m not crying but I can’t stop the tears. You rub my back and the bruised skin around my throat. Your lips are so soft on my Adam’s apple and you say you will swallow all my pain. ‘You are so beautiful, Yuzuru.’ You tell me you have never heard a sound more perfect than the one I played just now. You say that I need to lose myself to be everything. And when I return to myself, I will be nothing.

‘Do you hate me now?’ You ask me again. I want to tell you that I do, that I really do. But I don’t. I just don’t. I shake my head and I bite my lips and you tell me to stop that. You kiss where my teeth were just now. I taste of vanilla, you tell me. I don’t know what you taste of. ‘Everything.’ I want to try but… ‘Not me, my Yuzuru.’ You paint my lips with my own saliva and you almost whisper how much you want to have me. ‘Not me, my Yuzuru.’ I lay my head on your chest and you ask me to play for you tomorrow. I nod. I will play for you. I will play like today, until my finger bleeds. ‘You’re so beautiful, Yuzuru.’ I ask if that is also written in the stars.

‘I will write one for you.’

 

 

‘Come here, Yuzuru.’

Patrick sits on the pelts of the tigers and the hides of wolves that were once the chief’s. Even the tent which was once the only place he swore he would not delight himself in is now all his. He chuckles at the scent of his weak father that still dwelled in the skins of his chase but even more at his own irony, for following the same ridicule route of jealousy.

‘Come here.’

The young man walks slowly in his direction, standing between his open legs. The general searches for the wrists of his huntress and he places a vestal kiss on each.

‘Show me your hand.’

Yuzuru opens his fingers that were curled into a fist and dry blood adorns the shallow cut in concentric circles. He traces the crimson pattern, drawing around the wound to see if he could heal it.

‘Why do you want him so much?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Why do you protect him then? Is it because he is the emperor? Because he made you his concubine?’

‘I am protecting you.’

‘Has he made you his? In your bed? In his bed?’

‘Please.’ Yuzuru tries to retrieve his hand but Patrick secures him in the spot.

‘We need to wash this before it gets infected.’

The water at the well is a mirror with stars written in it. Yuzuru hesitates at the sight of the liquified crystal but Patrick delicately submerges both their hands in the filled stoned void, interlacing their fingers. Inside the well, their hands are distorted, flowing beyond the laws of physics in bizarre motions.

‘Who saved you, Yuzuru, that day?’

‘Patrick–‘

‘Who saved you when you were washed ashore in that storm? Who was the one who held your hand when you cried for help but no one came? Who was it?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I wanted you since that day when the sea brought you to the East. That day when I saw you trembling like a cornered gazelle waiting to be devoured. I wanted to have your lips that day, the purple lips and your pale face. I dreamed of you fainting in my arms so I would be the one you would see before you slept and the first one to call your name when you woke. I want you so much, Yuzuru.’

‘I should have died that day.’

‘No.’ He shakes his head, the tingles in his spine breaking the serenity of his disguised stillness.

‘I should have drowned that day!’ Yuzuru raises his voice as he pulls back his injured palm, spilling a wave to the dandelions that grew around the well. ‘I should have never been saved. You should have let me go that day. To the sea, to the ocean, to the highest bidder that wanted this life! Why didn’t you let me drown?’

Rage is a game that one can play alone but never be victorious. Patrick runs his wet fingers through the young man’s hair like he always did, parting the strands to the side and inhaling the sweetness that only he had. His hand stops at the back of the head though, and he grabs a handful of the locks with the force of his anger, closing the distance between their bodies, his torso to Yuzuru’s back.

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘I would never hurt you, Yuzuru.’

The general thrusts his captive forward, shoving Yuzuru’s face into the water. He intensifies the clasp on the hair when the other man tries to free himself but he locks him against the slabs of the well with his hips, immersing his head completely. He laughs, almost maniac and feral, as bubbles of air surge at the surface, tickling the skin and the hairs of his own arm.

Yuzuru falls to his knees when Patrick finally pulls him back, his mouth open wide and gasping for air, tears mixing with the drops of freshwater soaking his collar and the fabric on his shoulders, his silhouette shrunk and wavering in the see-saw of terror and shock.

‘I will never hurt you, Yuzuru.’ He hugs the young man, taking from him the sobs and offering a solace in his embrace. He rubs the rosy cheeks in cotton fondles and he licks the leftover saltiness on the eyelids. ‘I will save you every time you drown Yuzuru. I will hold you until you stop telling me you want to die. I am here Yuzuru. I will take care of you.’

‘Please…’ He can finally digest the cold air of the night but the fear in his pupils is still ignited and he dodges from the small caresses. ‘… please don’t touch me.’

‘It’s him, isn’t it? It will always be him.’

‘No, please.’

‘Tonight is the night of the Full Moon. Do you remember your promise?’

He nods, digging his fingers into his forearms. ‘The royal hunt.’

‘Yes, I will hunt for you tonight Yuzuru.’ Patrick smiles while he places another kiss on the young man’s forehead. ‘I will hunt you and make you mine. I will fill you so much that you will always remember you belong to me only.’

He keeps nodding, the mark of his flower burning again amidst the drenched tunic and his dripping hair.

‘And he too. I will hunt for that emperor of yours.’

Yuzuru finally looks at the general, hurt in his accusing gaze and he bites his lips to suppress the wail of his inner turmoil, the East against the empire.

‘You have never shown me this face!’ It is the first time that Yuzuru sees Patrick crying, each word ripped from his vocal chords and the syllables almost slurred. ‘You never show me who you are Yuzuru. But to him! You give him everything! But me? Why can’t I see it too? Why not me? Tell me.’

Yuzuru catches one of the tears. ‘I’m sorry.’

Under the light of the full moon, the broad shoulders of the chief of the East cast no shadow.

‘Pray Yuzuru. Pray that Nature loves you more than I do because my arrow won’t fail a second time.’


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt for Yuzuru, the prey of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear all, this was supposed to be the last chapter for this installment but I decided to add one more chapter since this needs some sort of epilogue to close this episode (also because it is emotionally draining me) and move on to the grand finale. I am hating myself because I don't know how to make justice to that E rating. Please forgive me. 
> 
> Disclaimer: this is a work of FICTION. Self-explanatory. Art for art's sake.

The full moon is a mirror that reflects his own shadow through the lenses of the different stars there, in the night sky, and extends it through the universe until it reaches the doors to infinity. It travels so far that when it returns to his body, his soul doesn’t recognize it anymore.

_Have you had enough? Have I become what you wanted me to be? Everything and nothing? Why do you still mock me, my Lord?_

Yuzuru steps out of the chief’s tent, only the coat of wolf’s fur draping over his shoulders and hugging his svelte silhouette and thin waist. The nocturnal gusts attack his legs but the ground is warm under his bare feet and he kneels with arms extended forward, his forehead lying in the space between them on a reverent bow as Nature’s child.

_You’re beautiful, my Yuzuru._

His nails dig into the earth, burying into the crimson dirt and silver dust, and he brings a handful of the ashen soil to his chest. The stale particles seep between his fingers, a powdery cascade that travels from his sternum to his thighs, disappearing in the air as the wind scatters them away.

_Almost as beautiful as your loyalty._

He lifts his gaze to the moon, to the patches of gray and pearl on its surface and the cracks in between, pieces of a puzzle assembled randomly, like blotches of blood from a dying deer. His own blood painting the moon, grotesquely ugly and solemnly graceful. Yuzuru smiles, almost choking at the pathetic quiver of his own voice constricted by _his_ hand around his own throat that wasn’t there.

‘What else can I do for you, my Lord?’ He takes a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of sage left on his fingertips. ‘What else can a dead man wish for?’

The labyrinth of the forest is his playground and he navigates on the maze of cypresses and pines with his eyes closed, guided by his own heart beats and lulled by the flames the he can hear closer and closer. The dance of the leaves too, the veined margins sharp and the twirling twigs on the beaks of the owls, the crisp roots proliferated under his soles. He follows the call of Nature to the depths of the woodland, in the mists where time is uncertain and where time fiddle its own chimes.

Yuzuru stops at the outskirts of the prayer circle and the chosen men of bodies covered in golden mud and the virgin priestesses bathed in the elixir of tree sap all bow to him, their wild cries resonating through the crowns of green above them. Sight returns to the young man when the man gazelle plants a kiss on each of his ankles, murmuring a string of slurs, before he rises to replace the wolf’s pelt from his shoulders with a white veil. It is so light that the night gale assaults his navel in cruel fondles and his wrists tremble when he joins them at the mercy of the Stag King.

‘Are you afraid?’

Patrick brings a silk cloth in the same pristine whiteness to Yuzuru’s mouth and he kisses his lips through the fabric, the threads imbued with the blessing of the Huntress as he ties the young man’s hands. ‘Are you afraid of me?’ He repeats the question when he lifts Yuzuru to his arms so his feet won’t touch the hunting grounds, but the flower of the night shakes his head, averting his gaze.

‘I’m not afraid.’

Laid on the deer husk altar that belongs to him only and surrounded by the ribbons of red and orange fire, the white veil envelops his skin in a crystalline layer, translucid under the embers that hides nothing of his complete nakedness.

‘You’re beautiful, my Yuzuru.’ Patrick too returns to the prayer chord, waiting for the moment when the huntress can be finally touched.

The arrival of the woman with the tigress carcass is announced with the deafening blow of the curled seashell and Yuzuru recoils into himself as he feels the ripples of the waves run over him. It is the waves at the end of the precipice hauling at the rocks and splitting them into nothingness. They are going to smash on him too and break him into pieces, arms and legs apart, his guts out and floating on the ocean. The waves will pierce his core and scrape every rib until he drowns in his own juices.

He is drowning in the tears of his own terror.

Yuzuru sits, his feet almost touching the earth, but the flames are too high, too dense for him to find an escape, and the tigress pushes him down by the Adam’s apple, her hand holding him by the jaw and the thumb sinking on the cartilage of his throat.

‘Don’t be afraid, oh chosen one. Son of Nature and daughter of the Eastern star.’

He nods faintly, lowering his tied wrists until they touch her exposed breasts. It is the first time he hears her voice, a deep, motherly timbre, guttural and slightly rough on the palate, a voice that is like the waves but he is floating on them and not drenched. The tigress traps his hips between her knees as she flails her arms above him, reenacting the chase for the carcass on her, the fight of the animal as it gnaws on her collarbones, snapping the necklace of canines around them, and her struggle to overpower the exorbitant feline. It is Yuzuru now the incarnation of that beast, wildly tamed under her towering profile, and she raises her own dagger, ready to pierce the creature’s heart. She is so agile in her predating dexterity that the young man doesn’t feel the blade slashing through the veil and the silk holding his hands stable.

Perhaps dying was devoid of pain.

The prayer circle erupts in a frenzied cacophony of stomps and incoherent yells, no words formed but only monosyllables as pure as an infant’s babbling and as savage as the tearing of flesh on the teeth of a running cheetah. The tigress huntress brushes her fingers on the mark of the flower of the night, smearing it in silver talc, what it is Yuzuru doesn’t know. She gathers one of his tears and brings it to his lips, painting them in the same color while searching for his tongue. The first lick is salty but it soon evolves to a lingering sweetness, of vanilla flowers and petals of jasmine.

‘The taste of a virgin huntress.’

She moves down to his chest, the colors in motion, the streaks trailing to his sex. Her hand wraps on his manhood and he hisses at the foreign caress, the heat of the flames slowly entering him and he spreads his legs apart.

‘Are you still afraid, child of the night?’ The tigress retreats from the altar, the man gazelle supporting her falling figure, debilitated but not weak, her voice resonating through all of the people present.

‘No.’ Yuzuru looks at the sky, the full moon directly on the line of his sight. He is not afraid he will drown in the muddled seas or the void of the precipice. He stares at his palm over the stars. ‘What am I? Who am I? Who will I be tonight?’

‘You are…’ All the drums and shouts deflate and the blazing ribbons recede as the leopard of the forest roars between the trunks of never-withering bark. They all bow to the sovereign feline. ‘… the highest offer from the gods.’ The spotted animal jumps to Yuzuru, his paws pressing on his neck like the tigress had done before. The king looms over his face, the whiskers tickling his cheeks and nose. There is a glow in the pyres of his eyes that reminds the young man of the fiery temper, of the reckless sword and the stubborn, unyielding will of the emperor. The one that vowed to make him his concubine. ‘You have died tonight as the huntress and you are reborn as the virgin prey.’

The leopard licks his forehead with its sandpaper tongue, the jarring roughness but also tender blessing of Nature. It dwells on him, canines on skin, until the shivers subside and Yuzuru draws the feline’s muzzle to him, his smile met with a reassuring bass purr.

‘I am…’ The young man sits as the beast bounces back to the ground. When Yuzuru’s bare feet touch the fiery earth, he moans in delight as the aphrodisiac fever of the chants spread from his soles to all his muscles, excitement and fear at the tip of his nerves. ‘… _your_ prey.’

The leopard roars again and this time, all people follow the same call in their dances around the bonfire and they soon disperse through the woods, looking for their mate for the night. Patrick is the one to enter the flames and he lifts one of the dark locks to his lips. ‘You’re so beautiful, Yuzuru. But it’s not enough.’ He turns the young man around, putting back the white veil that covers his silhouette. ‘You’re a prey Yuzuru. Run. Run until you can’t breathe anymore. Run until I catch you.’

‘What if you don’t?’ He steps away, holding to the collar of the leopard.

‘I am the Stag King.’ The mark on Patrick’s collarbone is the brightest under the moonlight and he steps down to where his consort was just standing, kissing the soil of Yuzuru’s footprint. ‘I am the hunter. Your hunter. And I will chase you. I will hunt you tonight and when you lay under me, you will feel the highest pleasure.’

The labyrinth of the forest is his playground but the grooves are alive and Yuzuru is lost in the entanglement of the intricate thickets. Drums of rattle skin, they hammer on the fibrous scales, shrieks of fawns pierced by diamond tips, they stab him not. He runs, led by the sprint of the leopard, but the rosette fur soon disappears in the shadows. The rocks under his feet, they quiver to their carnage, the voices of men and women, and the ones that are neither and both, they surge on him, below him, around and in him. It is the dread of being caught and the thrill of being hunted. It is the adrenaline pulsating in his blood, one step and another, far, now close, closer, not wanting to be subjugated and yet, his body runs not away, but to the hunter.

To be nothing and everything.

It is the first time that the heart of the forest opens to him and Yuzuru follows the stardust refracted in the moon dew. The land smells of rain and untouched grass, of flowering buds waiting to bloom, almost enchanted. The seeding springs skim through his ankles as he walks further into that isolated garden, kneeling beside the meek leopardess.

‘Are you waiting for your hunter too?’

She licks the back of his hands, purring like a petite cat and not with the wilderness she possesses.

 _Will I ever be like you, strong and beautiful?_ She closes her eyes, ears down in submission, as if she could understand him and nod affirmatively. _Will I ever… be free?_

The stride of the leopard is so light it leaves no prints in the earth and is so silent Yuzuru notices not when the king of the forest had returned to the cradle of his companion, of his consort that affectionately retributes the same sweep on the paw and the entangled tails. The rosettes on their fur coat match, arc to arc, needle to needle.

‘Aren’t they beautiful?’

Yuzuru hasn’t heard the velvety baritone in countless grains of sand of the hourglass but he remembers it as if it had never left him. He turns around just in time to dodge the hand of the emperor.

‘Why didn’t you go back?’ He expects to see the gold armor and indigo garment of royalty, the jade butterfly tied at his waist together with the purple sash. It is a torn tunic instead, frayed and mud at the hems, the sword still on its sheath. The eyes though, they still burned in the same flames of the bonfire and his hair the same curled bark of the trees surrounding them.

‘Only if you come with me.’ Javier takes a tentative step closer.

‘My place is here.’

‘Your place is next to me,’ He retrieves the dragonfly hairpin, the only jewel he protected and saved, and he ties a lock of the black hair with it. The scarlet wings are even brighter against the dark strands, ‘my concubine.’

The light brush of Javier’s fingertip at his earlobe sends a shiver through his limbs that he fails to hide. ‘Why are you here?’ He recoils at the gentleness of the touch and yet he hopes it lingers a little longer. ‘Why are you doing this? You have to go back. You can’t let the empire perish because of your recklessness! It’s your empire. You said you would protect it!’

‘I will–‘

‘Then leave!’ Yuzuru raises his voice, startling himself but Javier keeps smiling at him, the same tender ember that had pitched to the back of his neck. ‘The empire needs you.’

‘Will I ever be more than just the emperor to you?’ The younger man presses his lips together in a shutting violence and shakes his head. Javier lifts his face by the chin so their gazes meet directly, hazelnut to raven, universe to void, everything to nothing. ‘Tonight, the empire doesn’t exist. The East doesn’t exist. I am not the emperor and you are not the highest consort.’

Javier falls to his knees, his face buried on Yuzuru’s exposed navel, inhaling the minty soil and the vanilla, his arms dragging the white veil as they descend to the younger man’s lower back. It is a muffled whimper that leaves both their throats and the heat of the night seeps into where they are joined. Yuzuru feels the urge to push the emperor away but he rivets his hands in the chocolate hair instead. ‘Javier.’ He draws him nearer, closer, until the narrow distance between them is filled. ‘Tonight you are only Javier and I am only Yuzuru.’

His nails tiptoe on the scalp, not rushing through the strands that slip between his fingers.

‘Will you be mine? Will you finally be mine?’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘What?’ Javier’s hand trails up the spine, ascending on each vertebra, on each valley between them, seeking to conquer more. ‘That I want you?’ He places a chaste kiss on the base of the younger man’s manhood, smirking with the responsive quiver. ‘That you want me too?’

Yuzuru almost loses balance with the shuffling quick, trifle contact of lips on him and the lagging, acute extortions on his sex, a game that the two of them had already gambled their souls. He holds to the emperor’s collarbone but the other man winces.

_You are his shadow, my Yuzuru. Let him not lose the light._

He opens the collar of the tunic, a hawkish yank that pulls the garment apart, falling from his shoulders. It is not the cut on an arrow.

‘Why do you have it?’ The thin layer of blood on the mark is dry but his fingertips clearly trace the pattern.

‘She gave me.’ The pair of leopards have already gone though. ‘It is written in the stars.’

_I will write one for you, my Yuzuru._

‘Do you know what that means?’ The Stag is almost alive under his pulse.

‘Show me.’

Yuzuru’s knees settles in the damp soil, the weight of his body absorbed by the earth as he closes his eyes. He joins his hands, scooping the air between their chests like how one draws water from a well, and he drinks of it. He kisses the mark of the stag on the emperor’s clavicle, the metallic aftertaste on his tongue and the subtle pangs of arousal on his palate.

‘Tonight it is the night of the full moon.’ Javier’s cheeks are flushed with the same burgeoning excitement, penetrating his pores through the scar like a venom that doesn’t kill but sharpens the senses. ‘It is the night of the hunters.’

‘Are you my prey, Yuzuru?’

The young man nods, leaning back, slowly, restoring the distance in a tempting dance, until he lies on his back, imitating the leopardess in the anticipated wait for the one who he would be willing to let himself be captured by. For his hunter promised by Nature. Javier crawls to him, unsteady, toddling at the offering to him, the virgin provocation robbing him of his composure as he removes the remaining layers confining his movements. He looms over Yuzuru’s naked silhouette, lodging between his open legs, eyes cast on his pale complexion tinged with silver, on the clandestine moles concealed from sight, on the patches of rosy crimson where his skin was most sensitive.

‘You’re so beautiful, my concubine.’

Yuzuru shuffles a little to the side, hiding his face at the embarrassment of being exposed but his veins drumming with the frenzy that the flame in the other man’s irises forge in him. The emperor arrests him by the wrists, holding them together and above his head, halting his coy stance, their faces almost touching.

‘Yuzuru.’ He calls his name like a mantra. ‘Yuzuru.’ On his hair, on his earlobe, on the bridge of his nose. ‘Yuzuru.’ Javier is so close that his breath tickles the path where he whispers. ‘Yuzuru.’ On the chin, on the Adam’s apple and the notch below it. ‘Yuzuru.’ And with each breath, a more sustained spasm from the prey, until he arches his back to seal the interlude between their chests and hips.

The emperor too sinks in their tangled limbs, their thriving erections rubbing in ecstasy, skin and slit, and a restrained moan fills the air. Javier reaches for Yuzuru’s lips, wanting to drink more of that voice, of his stubborn will that refused to let him hear his bare core. He kisses him harder, pressing him down to the earth, their tongues finding each other, and he smirks when the young man tries to escape, his wrists in a wrestle with his fingers, begging for oxygen. Let him have none of it and drink from him only.

A sharp bite on his lower lip and Javier releases his prey, wiping the blood and saliva with the back of his hand. Yuzuru’s eyes shine in a glimmer of defiance and lust, his mouth slightly parted following the fluctuating rhythm of his chest. He too grins, proud in obeying but not being tamed.

‘You’re so beautiful, Yuzuru.’ The emperor licks the red trail to the tip of his finger until it is totally wet. ‘I will make you even more.’ His nail grazes down Yuzuru’s manhood, the throbbing length hardening even more at the tease, and he plunges the digit past the tight ring of muscles.

His consort bites his lower lip and his own hands clutch to Javier’s forearms, squeezing harder for each deeper search in him, in his resolve to not show how much he fears the pleasure and how much he wants to drown in it.

‘The real hunting…’ Javier removes his finger, positioning himself at a better angle as he places a platonic kiss in each nipple, each caress spilling his impatience to indulge in the flesh and sultry heat. ‘… will you allow me to devour you?’

‘To the bones?’ He nods, his knees drawing apart, inviting the emperor with his impetuous trembling.

‘ _Everything_.’

When Javier thrusts inside of him, penetrating until he is totally buried inside, Yuzuru open his mouth in a silent cry, the air of cypress and pine pitching straight to his lungs, burning him with an intensity that hurts. His hunter too, gasping and shivering, suddenly fragile in their shared intimacy. It is not an ache of fused limbs nor the pain of breaching, but the escalating craving for a longing they both had.

‘It’s so good, Yuzuru.’ The words are low grunts. A tear trails down Yuzuru’s cheek to his flower of the night and Javier catches it. ‘You’re beautiful, Yuzuru, more than any loyalty.’ He traces the swollen lips, just as in the ritual, but the young man sucks the digit fervently just as his muscles twitch tighter around the emperor’s member.

‘Move…’ He nips on the phalanges too, on the lines of his palm, on the skin between his fingers, enticing him in the same pace he was being entered. ‘… slowly.’

It is vigorously sluggish the cadence of the smack of their skins, Javier’s balls to his consort’s inner thighs, the obscenely wet symphony of their sweat covered bodies. The waves of pleasure elicit from Yuzuru the most primal moans, seducing cries in its purity begging to be dirtied. It is unhurried their momentum to seek for more contact, the friction of Yuzuru’s erection between their navels, but each thrust is stronger amidst the mumbling of their names, the stag and the flower, to perpetuate the gluttony of their yearning and to lose completely in that passion.

Yuzuru comes first as Javier secures him by the hips with bruising fingers in another lunge, the onslaught of the hardness on his prostate sending him on a madness of white spilled over his waist and torso. It is majestic the way his essence mingles with the silver of his glistening skin, and the emperor disentangles from the heat of his consort, finishing himself with a couple of rough strokes with their joined, trembling hands, on that same canvas. He paints Yuzuru’s chest in gentle brushes of fingertips, a moan with each line on the overly sensitive muscles, as he recovers his breath. Their semen are ribbons of embers too, deliciously warm, coating his knuckles, and he brings them to his lips.

Yuzuru intercepts the emperor’s wrist before it reaches his mouth. ‘Please.’

It is just a drop of their coupled whiteness and Javier licks a dollop, kissing his prey right after, the two of them greedily savoring the bitterness that dissolves into vanilla and Nature. The sky is at its darkest when they lie side by side as if the moon had cloaked itself in the clouds. Yuzuru closes his eyes for brief seconds, immersing himself in the shadows.

‘I used to hate you, Javier.’ The scarlet hairpin falls from Yuzuru’s damp strands and he clasps it on Javier’s hazelnut locks, even curlier now, chuckling at the sight.

‘When you first came to court?’ He places a chaste kiss on the young man’s forehead.

He shakes his head. ‘Before I had even met you.’

‘How?’ Yuzuru rolls on top of Javier, straddling him by the hips as he was encaged before. He rubs himself on the climaxed manhood, torturing and bewitching the emperor with an uncomfortable pressure. ‘Why?’

‘It was written in the stars.’

_You can’t defy the stars, my Yuzuru._

What else can a dead man wish for?

Javier hisses at the lethargic pace, craving for more of the promised euphoria. ‘What do the stars say now?’

‘I want it all.’ Yuzuru bites the mark of the Stag. ‘I want the hunter, the prey, the moon. I want…’

The dance of the wild continues through the night. There is no huntress of the East nor the monarch of an empire dictated by the celestial bodies. Yuzuru and Javier are beasts in heat, their bodies in the incessant intercourse of rapture and delirium, the fog of lust asphyxiating them in its rage but also guiding them like a compass, to penetrate and to be filled. The young man drinks of the emperor, his mouth engulfing the throbbing length, he on his elbows and knees as Javier sucks each protrusion of his vertebrae, he and his hair pulled back in an animalistic grip as he digs his nails into his hunter’s pelvis, sweat and his semen running down his thighs.

‘I want…’

It is back to their initial knot, he the Nature’s sacrifice on his back and Javier buried in his slippery warmth, that Yuzuru last sees his own reflection in the emperor’s eyes. He smiles as he faints with the arrival of the highest pleasure, the roars of the leopards echoing in the distance.


	3. Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stars are never wrong, my Yuzuru.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear all, here is the epilogue to this installment as promised. It is rather short and I needed to separate it from the previous chapter because well... our concubine needs to prepare himself for the grand finale. I hope you have enjoyed the wild ride of this installment. 
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a work of FICTION. Art for art's sake.

‘Why did you betray me, my Yuzuru?’

Did I? Is not my loyalty with you? Is not my life in your hands as I promised? I can’t take it back. Aren’t your hands at my neck now? Break it. Break it like the string on the sitar you gave me. Break it like you did to all the other things you took from me. Break me.

‘I forgive you, my Yuzuru.’

But can I forgive myself? Can the wind ever touch me again with the hands of a child? Can the water ever wash me to its embrace?

‘It was written in the stars.’

Who wrote them? Yes, press harder until I can’t breathe anymore. Until I suffocate in your hands like I used to when you loved me. I will forever be nothing to your everything.

‘Do you hate me now, my Yuzuru?’

How can I hate you when you never taught me so? How can I hate you when all I did was to please you? What else can a dead man wish for? What else can you wish for? You are wrong.

‘My precious Yuzuru.’

The stars are wrong. Your stars are wrong.

‘The stars are never wrong.’

 

 

Yuzuru wakes up with an avalanche of air pouring down his open mouth, the torrent hurtling the walls of his throat with the thorns of the gelid drafts. For moments, he thinks he might really asphyxiate in the void, until his lungs settle, and a sharp cry escapes his parted lips. The full moon shines directly on his nakedness and there are more stars in the dark celestial veil than clouds, every single dot mocking him of his frail audacity. He extends his hand, trying to pluck them out, the brilliance of the stardust slipping through his fingers.

The shuddering of another body next to him, a slight tremor on his shoulder, a languid breath on the petals of his flower, startles his still sensitive skin but he relaxes in the company of another warmth as he sees the mop of hazelnut curls, the strands rivalling the earth in their hue, draping over Javier’s forehead and barely touching the eyelashes. Yuzuru brushes them to the side, only his fingertips hovering the peacefully sleeping face, his temples, the bridge of his nose, until they reach his lips, dry and bitten. He licks them tentatively, his tongue lingering on the bow, the taste of their sex still present. An emperor and yet just a man, flesh and bones, almost a child in the serenity of a honeyed dream.

_He is not you. He will never be like you._

The young man sits, a sharp sting of pain piercing him from his legs and climbing his spine. His chest too shivers at the residual ache of mauve bruises and crimson marks mapped all over his navel, his hips with roads of silver. The remnants of their joined essence and sweat in his skin are tacky and the wetness leaks between his thighs, but he smiles as the soreness reminds him of the intensity of the pleasure he has felt. A lust so powerful he forgot who he was. He wonders if Javier has experienced the same ferocious magnitude of their intercourse.

Yuzuru stares at his open palms, the various lines meeting and overwhelming others.

_Can I… can I have this? Can I–_

The gale of the night arrives at his back and surrounds him, the tenacious breeze assaulting his exposed collarbones, each fluttering of the gusts a slap on his cheeks. It is cold, very cold now that the hunt has been consumed, and he bows to Nature, his head to the soil asking for forgiveness. The wind simmers as it gently lays at the nape of his neck and it lifts him by the elbows. Yuzuru stands up, following the commanding will with unwavering obedience that pushes him towards the maze of the trees once again. The forest is silent, all the cries lost in the hollows of the cypresses, his steps echoing in the quietude. He wonders if he is the one tiptoeing on the stream of a nightmare. The labyrinth of the pines changes on its own whim, inviting those it desires and consuming the ghosts of the consciences lost in its roots.

The dirt at Yuzuru’s bare feet open to a lake he never knew it ever existed. A secret only partaken to the one who is a huntress and a prey. The young man hesitates as he catches sight of the water but the gale shoves him forward, pliable and not vehemently coercive. It is a pat on his shoulder blades and an arm that interlaces on his, insisting on the promenade to the edge of the spring. The lake is of thawed ice, of molten quartz mirroring the dress of the full moon. A boy is reflected on the surface, hair as long and dark as the night and eyes that shone in the same blush, with the same daze.

_Who are you? Are you me? Am I you?_

Yuzuru steps into the water, the petite shards of crystals tickling the soles of his feet. The tremors of his knees stir a few ripples on the pond, the concentric waves engulfing his shins, and he halts his tread, the terror of drowning crawling up his muscles. He shakes his head, teeth on teeth, the bottom of the ocean regurgitating in front of him just as the storm in his mind holds him prisoner and slave.

The same breeze whispers a song of bird prayers and yelps of wolf’s pups and tiger’s cubs, a modulation of intimate reassurance that he will not fall to the abyss. The young man lowers himself, nodding at Nature’s inflection, until he lies still in the bed of algae, pear and lime hands that shelter him from the precipice. The lake is shallow but the water submerges his body completely in its seamless latitude. It bathes his earlobes and the mark of the flower of the night, the waves timidly fondling his face. It gains momentum with the wind and the tide brushes his pressed lips in languid, playful kisses, requesting permission.

Yuzuru opens his mouth, the tip of his tongue tasting the water. It is of a subtle sweetness, of syrupy tenderness and… a tear falls to his cheek as he smiles. And one more, and another, until the saltiness of his own exhilaration mixes with the lake.

The water tastes of forgiveness, of a spoon of the blends of all oceans that absolves him of his guilt.

Yuzuru closes his eyes as he feels a swirl of pleasure dance on his sex. The waves fold around his manhood, teasing him in their renewed vows and he moans at the jest of their approval. He reaches for his erection, his fingers wrapping around the base as he strokes the length in a leisure rhythm. The flesh slides in his palm and the water, the growing euphoria arching his back and contracting the muscles on his abdomen, shooting him through the bliss that belonged to him only. He comes with a raw ecstatic cry on the ascending ribcage with the elated beats of his heart. The whiteness of his essence flows in the water and he brings the harmony of the two to his lips, savoring the compassion and the beauty in him.

For the first time, he belongs to no one but himself.

When Yuzuru opens his eyes, the full moon is soaked in gold. The curtains of the sky are drenched in eerie orange and scorching red, the clouds ripped apart with horror. The young man sits as he chokes on the smell of charred wood and seared bark. The wails of dying owls and eagles, the sobs of the wolves and the foxes, the screams of children and the withering earth pierce his core, as if they were tearing his soul to pieces.

The forest is burning.

_The stars are never wrong, my Yuzuru._


End file.
